THE text is done, and now for application, And there's a certain faction fain would sway, If any take his plainness in ill part, He's glad on't from the bottom of his heart; } * A severe attack upon Dryden, in Rose-street, Covent-garden, December 1679; in consequence, it is supposed, of his being reputed the author of the Essay on Satire. The preceding verse probably contains an allusion to the stabbing of Mr. Scroop by sir Thomas Armstrong, in the pit of the Duke's Theatre; mentioned by Langbaine (Dram. Poets, p. 460.) The rascal that cut the duke of York's picture. 0.-The same incident is referred to by other writers. The picture was cut from the legs downwards. A face in which such lineaments they read The duke was then in a sort of exile in Scotland. THE ATHEIST; OR, THE SECOND PART OF THE SOLDIER'S FORTUNE. -Hic noster auctores habet; TERENT. PROLOG. AD AND. THIS is intended as a sequel to the "Soldier's Fortune," (Vol. II.) and, like that comedy, is composed of a mass of adventures, without much order of succession, or coherence of plan. The principal aim, in both pieces, has obviously been to engage the imagination by bustle, novelty, and profusion of incidents, rather than, by just delineation of character, exactitude of plot, and propriety of sentiment, to win the slow approbation of the judgment. The dialogue has more freedom and vivacity than the other comedies, and abounds with that species of licentious wit which secured it's favourable reception with audiences whose minds were corrupted, by habit and example, to a perfect relish of grossness, and contempt of decency. Marriage, and all those decorums which embellish social life, and may be said to hold society most firmly together, are despised and ridiculed; and unbounded freedom, or rather licentiousness, extolled and set up in their stead. The play receives it's principal title from a character too frequent at that period: at least, if real Atheists were few, there were numerous pretenders to the title. The loose wits at the court of Charles II. affected, as a fashionable distinction, to discard all belief in religion, either natural or revealed; and even the king himself was sometimes believed not to be unfavourable to the same mode of thinking. The satire was, therefore, perhaps, properly directed. But, at present, when Atheism has |